Sitting in an air conditioned box inside an air conditioned stadium next to an air conditioned hotel with restaurants every 5 feet isn't a sport. Golf is more of a sport at least you are outside walking around when you aren't riding a little cart or paying a poor to haul your bag around.

They look more dead than the people who host the Gameshow Network Shows.

I mean in the end that's what e-sports really are. They're like being on a game show. You don't make a career usually about profiting from being a contestant on a gameshow. Some people have, but you really gotta be on the ball. The money from things like that are just a windfall, they're not something that's considered reliable income.

The amount of money they get back after taxes and after dividing it, is less than I make per year on my stocks and bonds.

Spending 10+ years playing a videogame to earn that amount of cash is not that great a return.

The small amount that the players get says to me that despite all appearances, no one in charge is actually taking e-sports seriously and they're just using it as a scam to milk money off of suburbanites with too much disposable income.

The small amount that the players get says to me that despite all appearances, no one in charge is actually taking e-sports seriously and they're just using it as a scam to milk money off of suburbanites with too much disposable income.

This is pretty much true, the prize money was all donated by the fans as well so they could unlock digital items and digital features for the videogame.

The small amount that the players get says to me that despite all appearances, no one in charge is actually taking e-sports seriously and they're just using it as a scam to milk money off of suburbanites with too much disposable income.

this is probably true for middle class twenty-somethings in the US and EU. but there is a minority of pro gamers who are in really poor countries where the <min wage pay is a decent amount

esports is pretty stupid but it benefits rich white people running the show just like everything else, its at the expense of stupid suburban white kids so it owns, and it occasionally helps people who otherwise would be working a lovely factory job and lets them take care of their family by playing video games

Yeah they had a thermometer and everything showing at what levels different stuff gets unlocked. It should be noted that most videogames did not need the amount of money listed to put the same features in the first place.

Yeah they had a thermometer and everything showing at what levels different stuff gets unlocked. It should be noted that most videogames did not need the amount of money listed to put the same features in the first place.

A Dota 2 compendium is 10 bucks. Something like 2-4 dollars from every compendium sale went into the prize pool (which is a little over 10 million dollars). Owning a compendium gets you a ton of dota 2 digital items that you can probably turn around and sell on the market for a couple bucks. I'm sure some one good at being a dota 2 hat baron could more than make back any cash they spent on a compendium.

All the stretch goals they had for the compendium were almost as bad as star citizens. A million dollars to have some interns poo poo out some hats over the weekend big deal. At least you don't need to own a compendium to watch every single game. It's completely free both from the in game spectate functions and off the myriad of streaming sites and ESPN too I guess.